Sustainability Seminar delivered on January 19, 2011 by Claremont McKenna Professor William Ascher, "Knowledge and...
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Sustainability Seminar delivered on January 19, 2011 by Claremont McKenna Professor William Ascher, "Knowledge and Environmental Policy.״ Environmental policymakers rely on a prodigious amount of knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Sometimes available knowledge is technically appropriate and covers the broad range of considerations that policymakers ought to take into account, yet it is easy to identify serious limitations in the generation, transmission, and use of relevant knowledge. Some forms and sources of knowledge are inappropriately privileged over others, narrowing the range of considerations that policymakers ought to take into account, such as practical knowledge and the expression of public preferences. The quest for more knowledge may rationalize shortsighted delays in taking necessary actions. By looking at how these three processes are exposed to both technical limitations and contestation, we can learn why and how knowledge is used and abused in the environmental policy process. The views that more knowledge resolves policy disputes, obviating the need for politics, and that "ugly politics" undermines the contributions of knowledge to environmental policymaking, neglect the crucial role that politics, as contestation over societal goals, has to play. The rejection of the inevitability of politics in the knowledge-policy relationship drives the politics underground, making it more difficult to see where value positions are masquerading as purely technical. Based on this diagnosis, many recommendations for improving the knowledge processes can be devised.

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A CUSA Sustainability Seminar delivered by Jay Famiglietti, PhD, Professor, Earth System Science and Civil &...
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A CUSA Sustainability Seminar delivered by Jay Famiglietti, PhD, Professor, Earth System Science and Civil & Environmental Engineering, and Director, UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling. Recorded on April 6, 2011. Over the last decade, satellite observations of Earth's water cycle, in particular, those from NASA's GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission, have provided an unprecedented view of recent changes in freshwater availability. In particular, the human fingerprint of water management practices such as reservoir storage and groundwater use is abundantly clear, and raises many important issues for climate, water, food and economic security. Moreover, the worldwide depletion of groundwater aquifers and their transboundary nature points to the great potential heightened conflict in the very near future. In this seminar I will review the basics of how the GRACE mission observes world water resources, what new information the mission has provided since its launch in 2002, and what the implications are for the future of water availability. Several hotspots for water stress, including implications for regional security and conflict, will be highlighted.

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Explore this rich-media digital story about vertical living created by The National Film Board of Canada and The New York...
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Explore this rich-media digital story about vertical living created by The National Film Board of Canada and The New York Times. The interactive collection includes videos, graphics, games, and articles that allow users to understand the nature, history, and impact of such structures on their occupants.From the site:HIGHRISE explores vertical living in the global suburbs. It’s multi-year, many-media collaborative documentary experiment at the National Film Board of Canada, directed by Katerina Cizek, and produced by Gerry Flahive. Since its launch in 2009, HIGHRISE has generated many projects, including mixed media, interactive documentaries, mobile productions, live presentations, installations and films. Collectively, the projects — and the ones to come — have both shaped and realized the HIGHRISE vision: to see how the documentary process can drive and participate in social innovation rather than just to document it; and to help re-invent what it means to be an urban species in the 21st century.

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A public health seminar recorded on April 4, 2011, "Linking Social and Ecological Determinants to Public Health: Case Studies...
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A public health seminar recorded on April 4, 2011, "Linking Social and Ecological Determinants to Public Health: Case Studies of Disparities in Conservation and Development in Costa Rica," delivered by Bernardo Aguilar-Gonzalez.For decades Costa Rica has enjoyed a "Green Republic" and exemplary democracy reputation with recognitions as the happiest and most sustainable country in the world. This has marked it as an exceptional nation in Mesoamerica, attracting substantial attention from the scientific community and high visitation rates from tourists. Effectively, this reputation is the result of one of the most ambitious attempts to establish a bioregional conservation area system, a progressive approach to environmental regulation and the social results of the welfare state, which prevailed as a development model between 1948 and the early 1980s. This welfare state includes one of the most reputable social medicine systems in our hemisphere.Yet, during the last 30 years it becomes obvious that the efforts of conservation have been focused mostly in rural areas, while poorly planned economic growth concentrates mostly in urban areas in the center of Costa Rica. Further, large-scale foreign investments are favored by government authorities to promote development in rural areas that are close to protected areas. This leads to two realities: One where environmental conflicts abound and development is restricted leading to higher migration rates and lower social and health indicators and another one which has significant urban environmental problems aside higher economic and social/health indicators.Will Costa Rica live up to its enlightened reputation? This question opens very interesting venues of research and work for academics and students interested in areas such as Public Health, Political Ecology, Environmental Sociology, Ecological Economics and Latin American Studies. The presentation will critically describe four case studies that illustrate the diagnosis in the South Pacific, Central Pacific, Central Valley and Northeastern Costa Rica which involve Neotropica Foundation's work, hoping to attract interest for further involvement of University of California, Irvine through the creation of course and research opportunities.

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Sustainability Seminar recorded on March 2, 2011, delivered by Georgetown University Professor George Shambaugh. Like the...
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Sustainability Seminar recorded on March 2, 2011, delivered by Georgetown University Professor George Shambaugh. Like the economic crises in Korea in 1997 and Argentina in 2001, U.S. and European responses to the 2008-2011 financial crises are less about what particular strategy is most likely to succeed or who specifically will be bailed out, than they are about the capacity of national governments to overhaul their economies and restore confidence in the global markets. Whether adopting neo-Keynesian, monetarist, or neo-liberal reforms or whether rescuing Wall Street or auto makers, state capacity is essential. Enhanced capacity increases a nation-state's ability to manage the market and has a significant positive effect on the economy by decreasing uncertainty; thus enhancing consumer and investor confidence. Low levels of state capacity compound market uncertainty with political uncertainty. This weakens bargaining strength and undermines confidence in both political leadership and the economy. Understanding how the power of, and distribution of power between, economic and political elites affects the capacity of national governments to manage markets effectively (whether this involves negotiating with labor unions, entrenched corporate and financial groups, domestic and international investors, foreign governments, or international financial institutions), enables us to predict recurring patterns of political exuberance, economic exuberance, economic policy inertia, and credible economic policy reform. These patterns of behavior help to explain the evolution of national economic policies that triggered economic crises in Asia and Latin America a decade ago and the United States and Europe today. They have also shaped national responses to these crises and, as a consequence, confidence in national and global economies.

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Recorded Sustainability Seminar Lecture on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 delivered by UCI Professor Richard Matthew. Families and...
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Recorded Sustainability Seminar Lecture on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 delivered by UCI Professor Richard Matthew. Families and health, businesses and educational systems, fresh water and clean air- there are a lot of things in our world that we would like to last. They are the material underpinnings of freedom, dignity, comfort and stability. We have come to realize over the last few decades, however, that some of the things we value and depend upon are moving along trajectories that are not sustainable. The costs are mounting and we can imagine a point in the not too distant future when some of these things run out of gas, falter, perhaps collapse. We have also come to realize that many of the things we value are deeply interconnected. Failure in one area can ripple across many other domains, always complicating matters, and, at times, generating complex disasters. These realizations, rooted in scientific enquiry and local knowledge, have generated one of the defining questions of our age: How do we design, promote, manage and measure the sustainability of different things, at different scales and in different contexts? The advanced state of many alarming trends and the complexity involved in transforming vast, interconnected processes can seem inexorably to lead to a simple answer: we can't. But is this really the best answer? We have unprecedented knowledge and tools that confer unprecedented power. Indeed, we often hear that solutions to many of our most daunting problems exist, but that we lack the political will to implement them. Which suggests we have something important that needs to be introduced, or reintroduced, into politics. Because in a democracy political will, the will to tackle new challenges, is the fruit of political concern and engagement. Politics here and across the world could be-and should be-the realm where we explore the challenging questions of our era from many perspectives, mobilize support for possible solutions, experiment with answers, share resources and lessons learned, and fairly and openly assess the effects of our decisions. Politics at its best allows us to do all this in a context imbued with powerful notions of fairness, dignity, and freedom. A politics of sustainability is not only possible, it is in some sense fundamental. Because in its most elemental form politics is about sustainability-about defining the life we want to lead together, and the conditions under which such life can endure and flourish.

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Sustainability Seminar delivered on February 9, 2011 by UC Irvine Ph.D. student Beth Karlin, "The Psychology of...
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Sustainability Seminar delivered on February 9, 2011 by UC Irvine Ph.D. student Beth Karlin, "The Psychology of Sustainability." There is growing consensus that environmental, social, and economic sustainability are not possible given current trends and that understanding human interactions with the environment is a key aspect of ameliorating many of these issues. Psychology, as the science of human behavior, is in a prime position to assist with this task. Human interactions with sustainability include human drivers of un-sustainability (e.g. over-use of limited resources), human consequences of instability (e.g. natural and technological disasters), and human responses to a changing environment (e.g. mitigation and adaptation). Although progress is being made in the natural and physical sciences towards technological solutions and in political circles towards more sustainable policies, an understanding of individuals is vital for these new technologies to be adopted and policies supported. This talk will include a discussion of current and pressing issues in the psychology of sustainability and share recent insights in areas such as social norms, risk perception, message framing, and positive psychology that highlight some of the ways that psychology is contributing to these issues.

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Sustainability Seminar delivered on February 16, 2011 by UC Riverside Professor Linda Fernandez "Transboundary Environmental Policy and Institutions along International Borders.״ The seminar analyzes the past, present and future management for pollutant reduction along international borders. Attention towards transboundary waters is necessary as environmental problems have increased in prevalence around the world as the shared waterways straddling boundaries are vulnerable and not infinitely bountiful and resilient. Transboundary settings offer interdependencies, opportunities and challenges to match management on the same scale as the natural physical connectedness of water flow across borders. This seminar investigates the interaction between sovereign countries in North America over shared waterways in the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. These countries present insightful steps for addressing polluted water at a time when the United Nations has designated 2010, Clean Water for a Healthy World where 2.2 million people die of contaminated water per year (United Nations, 2010). Asymmetry between the countries in terms of costs, damages, and emissions influences the incentives to solve the environmental pollution problem in a sustainable way.

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Sustainability Seminar delivered on February 23, 2011 by UC Irvine Professor David Feldman, "Who Controls Water? Conflict,...
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Sustainability Seminar delivered on February 23, 2011 by UC Irvine Professor David Feldman, "Who Controls Water? Conflict, Cooperation, and "Soft" Power״. Water is our planet's most precious resource. It is required by every living thing, yet a huge proportion of the world's population struggles to access it. Agriculture, aquaculture, industry, and energy depend on it - yet its adequacy and safety engender conflict. This conflict is likely to intensify as threats to freshwater abundance and quality, including climate change, urbanization, new forms of pollution, and privatization of control, continue to grow. Can we manage freshwater sensibly, and with proper regard for the welfare of future generations and other species? Must the cost of potable water become prohibitively expensive for the poor, especially when supplies are privatized? Do technological innovations expand supply or do they carry hidden risks? This talk shows how control of freshwater operates at different levels, from individual watersheds near cities to large river basins whose water - when diverted - is contested by entire countries. Nations can work together to embrace multiple water needs while also establishing fair, consistent criteria to promote available supply with less pollution through the exercise of soft power - the ability to advance reform through convincing others to emulate certain values, policies, and cultural attitudes that are embedded in certain prescribed measures such as local sustainability, adaptation to climate change, and the embracing of decentralized, participatory governance.

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